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@robertnyman

Maximize your search behavior in Firefox

Published on Monday, January 16, 2006

I though I’d share with you how you can really enhance your web searching by customizing the built-in search in Firefox, and perform more defined searching. If you aren’t aware of it, you have the possibility to add a lot more search engines to the Firefox search bar; a list of very interesting search engine add-ons can be found in the Search Engines web page.

Naturally, using the mouse to select the search field and a search engine is just tedious as well as strenuous, so let me provide the shortcuts you need to make your life easier:

Ctrl/Cmd + K to set focus to the search field.

Ctrl/Cmd + arrow up/arrow down to change between installed search engines (focus has to be set to the search field first).

Alt/Option + arrow up/arrow down to display the list of installed search engines and then arrow up/arrow down followed by Enter to choose one of them (focus has to be set to the search field first).

Actually, you can perform any kind of search using the addressbar. For instance type google + space + your keyword. You can even add any search engine to addressbar, adding links and modifying their properties in your Quick Searches folder in Bookmarks.

I simply open up a new tab — <code>Ctrl+T</code> — and issue "g <term here>" to seach google (or similar for other fields). I find it easier toouse this when you search many different search engines.. and less "clicky" than to set focus to the serch field with <code>Alt+E</code> and opeing the results in a new tab with <code>Alt+Enter</code> 😛

Authoring a search plugin is pretty straightforward too. Nick wanted one for Digital Web Magazine, so after researching it for a bit on Mycroft I put one together. The only constraint is your search engine must accept GET requests. For anyone that is interested in how I did it, the DWM search page, the source code to the plugin, and the JavaScript installer are at:

You will also need a 16×16 pixel icon in GIF or PNG format. The only tricky part is that in the markup that is produced by your search engine (not the plugin!), you will need some sort of markers that delineate the begin and end of the results, and each result item. Typically this is done with HTML comments. In our case this was easy since we use Smarty templates, so all I had to do was edit the template and then add the matching markers to the plugin source.

It works great. Now you can locate any Digital Web article from the archives using keywords and your Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape search bar. Hint: try “dynamic“. 😉